S. M. Stirling - Lords of Creation 01 - The Sky People.pdf - S. M. Stirling - widez2

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The Sky People by S. M.

Stirling

TO JANET, FOREVER

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Melinda Snodgrass, Daniel Abraham, Sally Gwylan, Emily Mah,

Yvonne Coats, Terry England, George R. R. Martin, Walter Jon Williams,

Yvonne Coats, and Ian Tregellis of Critical Mass for help and advice.

To Steve Brady for more help, on entomology this time.

Thanks to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Leigh Brackett, Otis Adelbert Kline,

Leinster, Heinlein, and all the other great pulpsters for gracing my

childhood with John Carter, Northwest Smith, "Wrong Way" Carson of

Venus, and all the heroes gifted with a better solar system than the one we

turned out to inhabit. From the jungles of Venus and the Grand Canal of

Marsopolis, I salute you!

All mistakes, infelicities, and errors are of course my own.

PROLOGUE

Venus

June 14,1962

The sun rose in the west.

Deera of the Cloud Mountain People ran as she had through the short

hours of darkness, without hope and without much fear. The mild, warm

air of the midlands made the sweat on her face and flanks feel almost cool

as it dried, and the tall grass beat against her thighs as her long legs

scissored endlessly. The morning sun was still low, casting the seven

runners' shadows before them and turning the clouds to the color of raw

gold. They had trotted through the short, bright summer night and would

run on into the long span of daylight, until the great yellow globe of Kru

sank in the east… if they lived that long, which was unlikely.

She would run until she could run no more. Then the Wergu would

catch them, and they would fight, and they would die. If they were

fortunate, they would die quickly; her warriors had orders to make sure of

that for her. There had been some slight chance that they would reach the

foothills before the beastmen caught up with them, being longer-limbed,

but their foes had gained too quickly for that to seem likely. The Cloud

Mountain party had been tired from a long journey when the ambush

struck, and those who broke away had not had time to snatch up more

than their weapons, nor had they been able to build enough of a lead to

hide their trail. Now hunger gnawed at them as well as weariness, and

they had had no time to do anything but scoop up water in their hands as

they forded pools or creeks. The Wergu were fresh, with gourds of water at

their belts and dried meat in their pouches to eat as they pursued.

Then her mate, Jaran, broke the deep rhythm of his breath, sniffing

deeply.

"What is it, my love?" Deera said. "What do you scent?"

Before he could answer, she smelled it herself, and spoke: "Fire!"

The land before the dozen-strong war party was gently rolling, covered

in long green grass starred with flowers crimson and white, with copses of

trees along the occasional small streams. They passed small herds of tharg

and churr , but luckily nothing bigger, and most animals-of-fur avoided

men. Not longtooths or great-wolves or crescent-horns, but there weren't

any of those in sight, either. Then they saw the thread of smoke rising

skyward, and saw animals and fliers heading away. Men and beastmen

used fire… or it might be wildfire from a lightning strike, deadly in

grassland country if it spread.

"We go there," Deera said, pointing; the sunlight broke off the bright

bronze of her spearhead.

She alone of their party carried metal weapons, the spear and the knife

at her belt; their trading mission to the coastal cities hadn't reached its

goal before the Wergu found them.

"That is where the streak-of-light pointed," her mate said doubtfully. "A

bad omen."

"It is a new-thing. If we go on with no new-thing, the beastmen will

crack our bones for marrow before the sun sets. If it is not a new-thing we

can use, we cannot be killed any more surely."

Their bare callused feet splashed through the creek, and they eeled

through the brush and trees on either side. Fliers exploded from the

boughs, eeeking indignantly, and a hawk pounced from the sky to harvest

them, its wings as broad as a man's spread arms.

Then the tribesmen stopped. A few moaned aloud in fear.

Deera's eyes went wide in wonder. For a long moment the thing in the

broad meadow ahead was so strange that her eyes slid away from its

shape, unable to comprehend.

Then there was a feeling like a click behind her brow, and she saw. It

was twice the height of a tall man, and stood on three long, spidery legs

amid a circle of burnt grass. The fire beneath was still working its way

outward, slow and sullen in the wet growth of spring. The body above was

a cone in shape, the bottom blackened and with a smaller cone protruding

from it; even at two hundred yards she could feel the heat. Holes like little

caves or the windows of a hut opened in the upper body, and movement

there brought a gasp from her people. The scent of burning was rank, and

she coughed a little at the smoke. Slowly, mastering the fear that made her

skin glisten with fresh sweat—was she not the heir to the Cave Master,

initiate of the Mystery?—she approached and prodded the skin of the…

thing with the tip of her spear. There was a hollow clunk .

"It is metal!" she said. "But not bronze or copper or tin or gold or

silver!"

Suddenly her mate pushed her between the shoulder blades. She looked

around in surprise.

"Go!" Jaran said with fierce hope in his eyes. "The Wergu will fear this

thing of magic. We will fight them here. If we kill many, they will not

pursue beyond it. Go! Run for the mountains!"

Agony spiked through her despair as he grounded the butt of his spear

and took his blowgun from the sling across his back, reaching for a dart

from his belt.

"I cannot leave you!"

"You are our people's hope, and there is no time for talk. Go. Go now !"

Weeping, Deera obeyed.

Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, USSR

June 14,1962

" Bozhemoi !" the technician whispered.

The grainy image flickered on the video monitors. It was in color, for no

expense had been spared. The smoke of landing had cleared, and the

scientists behind him exclaimed sharply as the camera deployed and

panned across a meadow scarred by fire. The audio pickups were

functioning as well; there was a crackling of burning grass, the hiss of the

wind, unintelligible cheeps and croaks.

"That is grass ," one of the biologists said, slurping at a glass of hot,

sweet tea from the samovar in the corner. The scent of it was strong in the

room, along with the scorched-insulation-and-metal smell of tube-driven

electronics. "And I would swear some sort of field-poppy."

"Parallel development under environmental influence," another, older

academician said, as the recording reels whirred. "Perhaps Comrade

Lysenko was right after all!"

Both fell silent as something flicked by the video pickup. The technician

kept his hands off the controls. The long feedback cycle to the probe's

robot mothercraft orbiting around Venus and from there to the surface

and back made it impossible to track moving objects. A beaked head filled

the pickup, a beak with fangs, blurred by the close-up. A tongue flicked

within as the whatever-it-was gnawed at the lens and then fluttered off. It

had teeth and feathered wings with claws on the forward edge… Then sky

showed again, white with only a tint of blue, and full of flying creatures too

distant to identify. The technician looked at some trees for reference, and

his eyes widened again as he realized how large some of the fliers must be.

"Are the Yanki getting any of this?" a KGB bigwig asked unhappily.

"I'm afraid so, Comrade General," the chief academician said. "There's

no way to narrowcast a beam over interplanetary distances. Just as we will

intercept their Martian probe's broadcasts when it lands next month.

That is why it was decided to rebroadcast internally as well."

The security officer opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again.

This time he whispered a curse: " Chto za chert ?" Even the most

ideologically vigilant could be forgiven a What the devil ! at what they saw

next as a half-dozen figures pushed through the brush and stood staring at

the probe.

They were men—human males, tall and fair. The one who approached

and tentatively prodded at the lander with the point of her spear was a

woman. Oh, it was no race that Earth had ever born; that combination of

umber skin, white-blond hair, tilted, light eyes, snub nose, and full lips…

perhaps somewhere in the Urals you might find a similar mix, but the

overall impression was exotic. So was the garb: loincloths and halter of

scaly leather, jewelry of raw gold nuggets and carved fangs. The head of

the woman's spear looked like bronze; those of her five male companions

were obsidian, pressure-flaked to an almost metallic finish. All were tall

and rangy, moving with a loose economy of motion like hunting wolves.

Utter silence fell. It lasted through the woman's flight, and the brief,

savage battle with a larger band of newcomers that followed—brutish

thickset figures who seemed almost a different species. When that was

over one of the victors approached the camera, his squat, massive naked

body painted in crude patterns and splashed with blood, some of it his

own; more blood and brains dripped from the knobkerrie he carried in

one hand.

At last the face filled the pickup. It was covered in what was either hair

or a sparse beard, the prognathous, thin-lipped mouth thrusting forward

underneath a huge blobby nose, the forehead slanting back from brow

ridges like a shelf of bone, the long skull ending in a bun at the rear.

Feathers stood in a topknot of reddish-brown hair. Suddenly the brutish

figure screamed, a long snarling wail that showed a gaping mouth full of

square tombstone teeth. The ball-headed club swung and the video signal

S. M. Stirling - Lords of Creation 01 - The Sky People.pdf

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